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Lesson in Waste Recognition
Recall that Ford (1922, p. 329) defined exactly three kinds of waste: waste
of time, waste of materials, and waste of energy. Waste of time includes
that of the time of people, time of the product or service (as in cycle or lead
time), and time of assets for which value-adding work is available.
The following statements that: “A car on a siding is … a great big ques-
tion mark” and “a delay is a criticism of our work and is something at once
to be investigated,” underscores the Ford business culture that taught the
entire workforce to recognize waste on sight. Most people would take the
idle rail car for granted, and then simply ignore it. A Ford worker would
on the other hand ask why the car was not in use: “Someone has to know
why it is there.”
The same thought process applies, for example, to a truck caught in rush-
hour traffic. Most observers probably take this for granted, and so does the
driver if he is being paid by the hour. The truth, of course, is that the truck is
burning fuel while going nowhere, a cargo that may easily be worth five fig-
ures is piling up cycle time, and the driver is meanwhile being paid to sit in
traffic. The trucking firm that learns to think like Henry Ford, and there is
no reason why the thought process cannot originate with a driver who rec-
ognizes the enormous wastefulness of this situation, will act on it quickly.
Solutions may include driving the route in off hours (even if drivers get a
shift premium) and use of navigation devices to go around traffic jams.
Ford’s statement: “… a delay is a criticism of our work and is something
at once to be investigated,” also applies directly to airlines that have, and
on more than one occasion, stranded passengers on runways for eight
or more hours. The Ford business culture would have challenged a delay
of even 15 minutes; the attitude was that transportation ought to be on
schedule. The recurrence of this kind of problem in the airline industry
exemplifies a lack of investigation and closed-loop corrective action. This
should encourage people to look for alternative forms of transportation,
and it should encourage railroads and bus lines to develop them.
The Railroads • 209
* * *
The trains must go through and on time. The time of freight movements has
been cut down about two thirds. A car on a siding is not just a car on a siding.
It is a great big question mark. Someone has to know why it is there. It used
to take 8 or 9 days to get freight through to Philadelphia or New York; now it
takes three and a half days. The organization is serving.
All sorts of explanations are put forward, of why a deficit was turned
into a surplus. I am told that it is all due to diverting the freight of the Ford
industries. If we had diverted all of our business to this road, that would not
explain why we manage at so much lower an operating cost than before. We
are routing as much as we can of our own business over the road, but only
because we there get the best service. For years past we had been trying to
send freight over this road because it was conveniently located, but we had
never been able to use it to any extent because of the delayed deliveries. We
could not count on a shipment to within five or six weeks; that tied up too
much money and also broke into our production schedule. There was no rea-
son why the road should not have had a schedule; but it did not. The delays
became legal matters to be taken up in due legal course; that is not the way of
business. We think that a delay is a criticism of our work and is something at
once to be investigated. That is business.
The railroads in general have broken down, and if the former conduct of
the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton is any criterion of management in general there
is no reason in the world why they should not have broken down. Too many
railroads are run, not from the offices of practical men, but from banking
offices, and the principles of procedure, the whole outlook, are financial—not
transportational, but financial. There has been a breakdown simply because
more attention has been paid to railroads as factors in the stock market than
as servants of the people. Outworn ideas have been retained, development
has been practically stopped, and railroad men with vision have not been set
free to grow.
Will a billion dollars solve that sort of trouble? No, a billion dollars will
only make the difficulty one billion dollars worse. The purpose of the bil-
lion is simply to continue the present methods of railroad management,
and it is because of the present methods that we have any railroad dif-
ficulties at all.
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